Coach upsetting cancer

Assistant coach Kenny Wimmer is motivating the undefeated Celtics despite a battle with throat cancer.

Kenny Wimmer was scared.

Months after completing his 15th year as an assistant football coach at Roanoke Catholic, Wimmer sat face-to-face with his doctor on Feb. 28, and found out he had throat cancer.

Wimmer was staring at two options:

Certain death within two years or 39 rounds of energy-zapping radiation treatments and several nausea-inducing chemotherapy soakings that might save his life.

Wimmer underwent his first treatment in March, just before Roanoke Catholic's banquet, where the Celtics received their championship rings they earned from a victory over Quantico in the 2016 VIS Division III final.

Old friend and ex-coaching colleague Chuck Blevins drove Wimmer to Blue Ridge Cancer Care for Round 1.

On the way, Wimmer had a sudden revelation.

"All these years I've been telling my players, 'It's mind over matter. Football parallels life. It's how you react to it. Be bigger than that. Be the storm,' " Wimmer said.

"All of a sudden I have to practice what I've been preaching.

"It was put up or shut up."

Shut up? Wimmer wasn't sure he would even be able to speak.

Dealing with squamous sarcoma promised to be far more difficult than developing a game plan to defeat an opponent in the state's smallest private-school football division.

Wimmer lost weight. He lost hair. He lost strength. He got sick to his stomach. He couldn't eat solid food for months.

And for a time, there was a chance he might lose his voice.

Wimmer, who played quarterback at Northside High School in the late 1970s for Jim Hickam, coaches the QBs at Roanoke Catholic.

But his real value to the Celtics might lie in his high-stepping, high-intensity, high-volume, pre-practice, pregame warmup routine designed to mobilize and motivate.

"Coach [Wimmer] is passionate beyond belief," Roanoke Catholic head coach Bob Price said. "Every coaching staff needs one."

Wimmer attended the team's postseason celebration with the intention of keeping his cancer diagnosis and treatment a secret from the players.

"He didn't want to tell the kids and interfere with the banquet, but we didn't know if he was going to make the banquet," said Wimmer's fiancée, Angela Wright.

"He went, but people could tell something was going on."

Fullback A.J. Bennett was one of the first players who got the news from Wimmer personally.

"It was devastating," Bennett said.

And with offseason conditioning, summer workouts and preseason practice looming in the coming months, potential starting quarterback Bryant Guilfoyle wondered about 2017.

"We didn't think he was going to be able to coach this year," he said.

Wimmer wasn't sure either.

He was using a feeding tube for nutrition, and he had a port in his chest.

His body weight, once at 176 pounds, dropped to a low of 131.

He passed out during the team's preseason workouts at Skelton 4-H camp in Wirtz.

"It was super-embarrassing to crash in front of your players," Wimmer said.

During hot days in August and September, he frequently had to seek shade under a tent at the practice field.

Even in the shade, Wimmer had a constant shadow.

It was Angela.

Thanks to the largesse of her bosses at Food Lion near Tanglewood Mall, she was granted time off to attend Roanoke Catholic football practices.

Wright assisted the team's two student trainers, helped make sure water bottles were filled, even retrieved balls for the team's place-kicker, but come on, everyone knew why she was on the sidelines.

"She said she's coming out to help the team, which she did, but really she was helping me," Wimmer said.

Wright serves as Wimmer's primary caregiver. Now on full disability, the coach needs plenty of assistance, physical and emotional.

Before Wimmer could tolerate solid food, Wright often would sympathetically eat her meals out of his sight.

"That's a whole different spectrum of taking care of somebody," she said. "I didn't think I could do it. I had people behind me telling me I could do it. And I knew I had to."

Wimmer is accustomed to life-changing events.

A son from a previous marriage was born in February 1985. Two months later, Wimmer's father died suddenly. Seven months after that loss, Wimmer lost nearly every possession he owned in a flood that inundated the Roanoke Valley.

Earlier this year he lost a high-paying job - on Valentine's Day - forcing Wimmer to seek private health insurance.

Exactly two weeks later, Wimmer was diagnosed with cancer.

He sold his house in Hunting Hills. He and Wright now live in a first-floor apartment at Pebble Creek in Roanoke County.

"It was almost like we were on a movie set," Wright said. "We were watching this, but it was happening to us."

Wimmer did not choose cancer. It chose him.

Once his fears were confirmed, he had no choice but to act.

"I looked at my options," he said. "I asked [the doctors], 'What if I don't go through these radiation and chemo treatments?

"They couldn't believe I even asked. They said, 'You're going to have less than two years, and last six months is going to be ugly.' "

Wimmer's first scan following the completion of his treatments indicated his cancer was in remission.

The pictures were spotless, just like Roanoke Catholic's football record.

The Celtics (10-0) will play in their fourth consecutive state final and aim for a third championship in four years when they face Fuqua School of Farmville on Friday at Vinyard Park.

"It's been our rallying point throughout the entire season," senior Sean Grande said of the coach's struggle.

Wimmer has coached every game in 2017, but it hasn't been easy.

Last week during the Celtics' first-round win over Blessed Sacrament-Huguenot, offensive coordinator Joe Sweeney noticed Wimmer seated on the bench and asked a friend to bring the coach at cup of hot chocolate.

Revived, Wimmer finished the game.

The bigger battle is far from over.

Wimmer, who turned 56 on Oct. 13, isn't sure what's in his future. He just hopes there's a ring or two in it.

Once football is finished, he will be found ringing a bell for the Salvation Army in front of the Tanglewood Kroger.

He wants to buy a used RV and travel the country with Wright next spring.

He will continue to express gratitude to his doctors and the medical community.

Next fall? Wimmer's game plan is to return to football practice, in full song.

"What a hypocrite I would be if I just gave up and let cancer kick my ass," Wimmer said. "This has given me a great platform to articulate ... difficulties.

They told me I had the possibility of losing my voice or having it be compromised, which scared me to death.

"How [was] I going to yell at the football players doing sign language?"

Wimmer wears a ring from Roanoke Catholic's two recent state titles on each hand.

If the Celtics prevail Friday, he has plans for another one.

"I told them this [championship] ring's for cancer," Wimmer said. "And I'm going to wear it on my middle finger."